Social Security Will Hurt the GOP in 2026

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Lisa Rein, Meryl Kornfield and Hannah Natanson  at WP:

The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover.

It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews.

Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath.

...

The table was set in February by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which installed a loyal, mid-level data analyst with no management experience to lead the $15.4 billion agency..

.Regional offices abruptly disappeared in a rushed reorganization. New policies to fight fraud were rolled out only to be canceled or changed, prompting confused customers to jam the phones and the website, which crashed repeatedly. Daily operations in some respects became an endless game of whack-a-mole as employees were pulled from one department to another.

MTG's Epiphany (No Joke)

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Robert Draper at NYT:

Eleven days after Charlie Kirk was killed in September, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the third-term Georgia congresswoman, was watching his memorial service on TV as the luminaries of the conservative movement and the Trump administration gathered to pay tribute to the young activist.

What stayed with Greene long afterward were the last two speakers who took the stage. First there was Kirk’s widow, Erika, who stood in white before the crowd filling the Arizona stadium, lifted her tear-filled eyes and said that she forgave her husband’s killer. And then there was President Trump. “He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose,” he said of Kirk. “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

“That was absolutely the worst statement,” Greene wrote to me in a text message months after the memorial service. And the contrast between Erika Kirk and the president was clarifying, she added. “It just shows where his heart is. And that’s the difference, with her having a sincere Christian faith, and proves that he does not have any faith.”

...

This September, Greene spoke with several of Epstein’s victims for the first time in a closed-door House Oversight Committee meeting. She knew that the women had paid their own way to come to Washington. She saw some of them trembling and crying as they spoke. Their accounts struck her as entirely believable. Greene herself had never been sexually abused, but she knew women who had. In her own small way, Greene later told me, she could understand what it was like for a woman to stand up to a powerful man.

After the hearing, Greene held a news conference at which she threatened to identify some of the men who had abused the women. (Greene says that she didn’t know those names herself but that she could have gotten them from the victims.) Trump called Greene to voice his displeasure. Greene was in her Capitol Hill office, and according to a staff member, everyone in the suite of rooms could hear him yelling at her as she listened to him on speakerphone. Greene says she expressed her perplexity over his intransigence. According to Greene, Trump replied, “My friends will get hurt.”

...

 Greene’s last exchange with the president was by text message on Nov. 16. That day, she received an anonymous email in her personal Gmail account that threatened her college-aged son: “Derek will have his life snuffed out soon. Better watch his back.” The email’s subject heading used the nickname Trump had given her the day before: “Marjorie Traitor Greene.”

Greene promptly texted that information to the president. According to a source familiar with the exchange, his long reply made no mention of her son. Instead, Trump insulted her in personal terms. When she replied that children should remain off limits from their disagreements, Trump responded that she had only herself to blame.

Trump's identification with Christianity is nothing but a label. He literally does not understand Christian teachings 

Spit Take: Trump Says Russia Wants Ukraine to Succeed

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Jennifer Bowers Bahney at Mediaite:

Critics branded President Donald Trump “an embarrassment” for declaring that Vladimir Putin wanted to see Ukraine “succeed,” even as Russian troops continued to unleash on Kiev.

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a much-hyped peace summit at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, Trump said no deal had been reached, but they’re “very close.”

Trump also claimed that Russia will help with reconstruction after peace is finally achieved.

“Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed,” Trump told reporters. “It sounds a little strange but I was explaining to the president, President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding. Including supplying energy, electricity, and other things at very low prices.”

Not everyone was buying Trump’s claim, though.

...

The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell wrote, “Whenever I truly want my neighbor to succeed, I break into his house, brutalize his family, steal his children, and burn his house to the ground while screaming, ‘bro, I’m just trying to help!’”

Longwell added, “Our president is an international calamity.”

Ukrainian commentator @BohuslavskaKate wrote, “About the press conference: Trump is absolutely detached from reality. He doesn’t understand how to end this war or what he is doing. But he visibly enjoys bragging about his relationship with Putin and their sweet phone calls in front of [Zelensky]. To him, it’s a kind of power flex, but in reality he is simply admiring a war criminal in front of the president of the victim nation. It doesn’t looks powerful, it looks sadistic and dumb.”

Rural Battlegrounds

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Marcia Brown, Samuel Benson and Rachel Shin at Politico:

Democrats are accustomed to losing in rural America — especially to Donald Trump. Now they’re hoping the president’s own policies might prove to be the leverage they need going into next year’s midterms.

The party faces immense challenges in farm country that have overwhelmingly voted Republican for decades and turned out in droves on the president’s behalf three times. But over the past year, those same communities have borne the brunt of his tariff agenda, health care center closures, lingering inflation and cuts to public lands programs.

...

The party is trying to replace wishful thinking with a new shoe-leather strategy in rural communities where it has long lacked a presence and is deploying unhappy farmers in media campaigns. If Democrats mean to retake Congress in the midterms or have a shot at the White House in 2028, their candidates don’t necessarily need to sweep rural counties — they just need to eat into the margins Trump was getting, which were frequently north of 80 percent of the vote.

...

Democrats have previously dedicated relatively modest amounts of money, staff and advertising to rural counties and districts outside of swing states. But after a string of off-year victories last month, House Democrats have launched their first-ever rural outreach program, an eight-figure campaign that will fund efforts to hire staffers for candidates, mobilize voters and run ads focusing on the cost of living.

And then there's the One Big Beautiful Bill:

Rural health care centers across the country have already shuttered in response to the law’s Medicaid cuts, which will disproportionately hit communities where hospitals are few and often primary employers. Low-income Americans are quickly learning they may no longer qualify for federal food aid — even as most of the tax breaks the GOP has touted will benefit the wealthy.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association and represents a ruby red state, recently called the law “a slap in the face to rural America.”

 

The 2026 Departure Lounge

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Annie Grayer, Molly English, and Alex Leeds Matthews at CNN:

Congressional Republicans have yet to break the record for most retirements in a single year, but some say it’s only a matter of time before widespread frustration with the current state of Washington leads to a tipping point as many in the party head for the exits.

...

Eleven House lawmakers – 10 Republicans and one Democrat – are currently running for governor, surpassing the previous record of nine lawmakers in 2018

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York also announced plans to run for governor this year, but her run was short-lived: she suspended her campaign in late December and said she would not run for reelection to the House.

This year, three senators have announced they are running for governor – with two taking the unusual step of potentially leaving their Senate terms early for a chance at winning the governor’s mansion in their home states.

More are expected to put their hats in the ring. The field is so crowded that in two states – South Carolina and Arizona – two GOP lawmakers are running against each other for governor.

Many say their decisions to leave Congress are unique or the result of opportunities arising in their states. But frequent partisan stalemate in Washington this term has contributed to the allure of becoming a state executive, particularly in states that are considered Republican strongholds.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville has decided that he could be more effective implementing Trump’s agenda by returning to his home state of Alabama

 

DOGE as Partisan Weapon

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   The real purpose of the "Department of Government Efficiency" was not to reduce deficits -- which it failed to do--  but to punish and disable perceived political enemies.

Luca Bellodi and Kyuwon Lee have a paper titled "The Executive Unbound: Politicized Bureaucracy and Partisan Procurement under DOGE."

The establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during Trump’s second term marks an expansion of presidential authority over federal agencies. This institutional development provides a rare opportunity to examine whether presidents can leverage politicized agencies for political and electoral goals. Drawing on detailed procurement data and DOGE’s cancellation records, we find that Republican donor firms were less likely to face cancellations, whereas firms donating to Democrats were more likely to lose contracts. Cancellations were less frequent in Republican-held districts, conservative agencies, and states favorable to the Republican Party. Leveraging the timing of the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, we use a difference-in-differences design to show that Wisconsin-based firms experienced a sharp increase in cancellations following the election, underscoring the strategic timing of DOGE’s operations. Our findings shed new light on the consequences of agency politicization and align with the Trump administration’s effort to consolidate its support base.

Pardon Lobbying

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

Rebecca Ballhaus, Josh Dawsey and C. Ryan Barber at WSJ:

In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted one sentence. He waited until his final day in office to issue around 140 additional acts of clemency. This term, he pardoned more than 1,500 people on his first day alone, and has since granted clemency to a further 87 people and companies.

The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.

A lobbying firm run by former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and former Trump Organization executive George Sorial was paid $1 million in the first quarter to lobby for a developer convicted of bribing former Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars. He hasn’t been pardoned. The firm declined to comment, and a spokesman for the developer said he terminated his relationship with the lobbying shop this spring.

...

Administration officials and lobbyists describe two playbooks that have emerged. There is the official track, which involves pardon czar Alice Johnson, Justice Department pardon attorney Ed Martin and the White House Counsel’s Office. Applicants usually go through one of the three, and ultimately White House counsel Dave Warrington reviews the application and makes a recommendation to Trump. The two men meet every few weeks to discuss pardons, administration officials said.

The second track is riskier but can be much faster. If an applicant can find Trump at Mar-a-Lago or a White House event and ask for a pardon directly, Trump is often inclined to be helpful, administration officials said—particularly if someone says the magic words: “unjust persecution.”

Trump has often claimed that those he pardons were the victims of “witch hunts.”

Many of Trump’s most controversial pardons—including for Zhao and the Honduran ex-president—have gone through the latter track, which some senior administration officials said worried them. Another senior White House official said the “vast majority” of pardons have gone through the proper channels.

...

Epstein Files Relases

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

David Enrich at NYT:

In a 2020 email released on Monday by the Justice Department, a federal prosecutor informed colleagues that President Trump’s name appeared on the flight logs for Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).”

The email, written in January 2020 by an unidentified federal prosecutor in Manhattan, noted that Mr. Trump was listed as a passenger on Mr. Epstein’s jet at least eight times from 1993 to 1996, including a few instances in which other passengers apparently included young women. The prosecutor wrote the message for “situational awareness” and “didn’t want any of this to be a surprise down the road,” according to the email.

The frequency of Mr. Trump’s travel on Mr. Epstein’s planes may have been news to prosecutors at the time, but the trips have since become public knowledge.

The logs tracking the comings and goings of Mr. Epstein’s planes, as well as their passengers, were exhibits in the criminal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, one of Mr. Epstein’s closest associates. They show that Mr. Trump was among numerous prominent individuals — including former President Bill Clinton — who were repeat passengers.

Last year, Trump lied through his teeth about flying on Epstein's plane:

Willa Pope Robbins at Mediaite:

Information released by the Department of Justice in some of the files surrounding convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was not properly redacted, with blacked-out text becoming visible with a simple copy and paste.

When the DOJ posted documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act on its website beginning Friday in accordance with the midnight deadline, the level of redacted information drew instant outrage.

But as more information continued to be released, amounting to nearly 30,000 documents, some viewers found that blackout intended to protect sensitive information was easily sidestepped by simply copying the text into a separate document

In 2019, Paul Manafort's lawyers made the same mistake. 

 

One Right-Wing Battle After Another

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.

Zach Kessel at The Free Beacon:

Leaders of Advancing American Freedom (AAF), the nonprofit led by former vice president Mike Pence, said that their move to hire more than a dozen former Heritage Foundation employees represents a significant shift within the American right.

AAF president Tim Chapman described the organization’s addition of Heritage Foundation’s legal, data, and economics centers, a move that doubles its size, as a "reorganization of the conservative movement.

"People are voting with their feet as to where they feel they are best suited to be," Chapman said.

The mass defections from the Heritage Foundation are part of the continuing fallout from president Kevin Roberts’s release, in October, of a clumsy video taking aim at critics of the podcast host Tucker Carlson, who had recently conducted a friendly interview with the neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes.

The new AAF hires include John Malcolm, who led the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and will lead the new Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law at AAF; Richard Stern, who directed Heritage’s economics center and will lead the Plymouth Center for Free Enterprise at AAF; and Kevin Dayaratna, who ran Heritage’s data analysis center and will build a similar program at his new institution.

...

Since Roberts released the video in late October, three Heritage Foundation board members—Princeton University professor Robert George, Abby Moffat, and Shane McCullar—have resigned. McCullar said he took issue with the fact that the think tank "hesitates to condemn antisemitism and hatred" and "gives a platform to those who spread them." George expressed frustration that Roberts "could not offer a full retraction" of his video statement.

Michael Starr at The Jerusalem Post:

During her Saturday show, Political commentator Candace Owens urged her audience to read a 19th-century antisemitic book and accused Jews of orchestrating the Transatlantic Slave Trade and racial conflict between Caucasian and African Americans.

The YouTube show episode focused on Owens's grievances with conservative pundit and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, who had criticized her during his Thursday Turning Point USA AmericaFest conference speech.

AT WP, Jim Geraghty writes of Turning Point USA's year-end conference: 

The smiling faces of [Tucker] Carlson and [Megyn] Kelly were lined up on a poster for the conference alongside podcaster Ben Shapiro, longtime Trump ally Stephen K. Bannon and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. (I realize this is a quaint and old-fashioned notion, but currently serving U.S. intelligence officials should not be speaking at a partisan pep rally.)

On Thursday, as the conference kicked off, Shapiro decided to address the elephant in the room.

“If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends … and, yes, at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover-up over Charlie’s murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover-up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name.”

...

On Thursday, as the conference kicked off, Shapiro decided to address the elephant in the room.

“If Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here, who worked with Charlie every single day, his best friends … and, yes, at Erica Kirk and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover-up over Charlie’s murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie’s murder or a cover-up in that murder, then we as people with a microphone have a moral obligation to call that out by name.”

....

For his part, Bannon bellowed, “Ben Shapiro is like a cancer and that cancer spreads.”

More Ways to Buy Favor with Trump

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

Karen Yourish, Kenneth P. Vogel, and Charlie Smart at NYT:

Since President Trump was elected a second time, he and his allies have raised nearly $2 billion for his favored political causes and passion projects. That total, which was confirmed by four people involved in the fund-raising, likely eclipses the amount raised to support his 2024 campaign.

The astounding haul hints at a level of transactionalism for which it is difficult to find obvious comparisons in modern American history. The identities of the donors behind much of the cash are not legally required to be, and have not been, publicly disclosed. In some cases, Mr. Trump’s team has offered donors anonymity.

To shed light on what has been a largely opaque fund-raising apparatus, The New York Times conducted a comprehensive investigation. It relied on previously unreported documents and public campaign finance filings, as well as interviews with dozens of people who are familiar with the solicitations or are involved in the fund-raising. It traced a large portion of the funds raised — more than half a billion dollars’ worth — back to 346 donors who each gave at least $250,000. It also found that more than half of them have benefited, or are involved in an industry that has benefited, from the actions or statements of Mr. Trump, the White House or federal agencies.

It is not possible to prove that any of the donations directly led to favorable treatment from the Trump administration. And the contributions do not personally enrich Mr. Trump, unlike some of his family’s cryptocurrency ventures.

But many of the deep-pocketed individuals and corporations who have given large sums have a lot riding on the administration’s actions, raising questions about conflicts of interest.

The Man Who Would Be King

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Peter Baker at NYT:

He no longer holds back, or is held back, as in the first term. Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 unleashed. The gold trim in the Oval Office, the demolition of the East Wing to be replaced by a massive ballroom, the plastering of his name and face on government buildings and now even the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the designation of his own birthday as a free-admission holiday at national parks — it all speaks to a personal aggrandizement and accumulation of power with meager resistance from Congress or the Supreme Court.

Nearly 250 years after American colonists threw off their king, this is arguably the closest the country has come during a time of general peace to the centralized authority of a monarch. Mr. Trump takes it upon himself to reinterpret a constitutional amendment and to eviscerate agencies and departments created by Congress. He dictates to private institutions how to run their affairs. He sends troops into American streets and wages an unauthorized war against nonmilitary boats in the Caribbean. He openly uses law enforcement for what his own chief of staff calls “score settling” against his enemies, he dispenses pardons to favored allies and he equates criticism to sedition punishable by death.

...

He and his staff have posted images of him in monarchical regalia, including an A.I.-generated illustration of him wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labeled “KING TRUMP” that dumps excrement on protesters. He delighted when the South Koreans gave him a replica of an ancient golden crown. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” he wrote about himself on social media.

Trump Family Gets Richer

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.

David Uberti, et al. at WSJ

When President Trump ran for re-election in 2024, he and his family already had vast business interests stretching from Manhattan office towers to a golf course in Ireland to hotel deals as far away as Vietnam.

The president’s second term has brought a major expansion of that empire, with forays into cryptocurrency, communications, financial products and now, a fusion-power deal. Ventures launched since Trump’s re-election generated at least $4 billion in proceeds and paper wealth for the family as of December, according to company statements and securities filings.

...

The recent expansion has made the Trumps a major player in the crypto world. They have launched a host of new ventures and products, from memecoins to data centers. The president is also pushing to relax regulations on the industry. The biggest crypto venture is World Liberty Financial. It has sold about $1.4 billion worth of WLFI tokens, a digital asset it created, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The firm also has launched USD1, a “stablecoin” whose value is pegged to the dollar and which generates significant interest income. The Trumps have a major stake in this business which is ultimately controlled by Trump and his family members through a complex ownership structure. The president has about 70% ownership of the stake through his trust, disclosures show.iness. World Liberty’s site says it is 38% owned by an entity called DT Marks Defi LLC...

In addition to their ownership interests in these businesses, the Trumps are co-founders or operators of many of them. Trump and his sons co-founded World Liberty. The Trumps receive 75% of net proceeds when World Liberty sells tokens, plus a cut of stablecoin returns. That revenue share would translate into about $1 billion in proceeds so far for the Trumps. The Trumps’ unsold tokens were worth about $3 billion as of December

.

 

Epstein Redactions

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Joe Walsh at CBS:

The Justice Department released thousands of new records on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but at least 550 pages in the documents are fully redacted, CBS News has found.

The newly released files included photos of several prominent people in Epstein's orbit, images from his homes and investigative records that detail disturbing allegations against the late sex offender. But the heavy redactions in many of the records have drawn criticism from Democrats and some Republicans, as the department defends its handling of the files.

One series of three consecutive documents — totaling 255 pages — is entirely redacted, with each page covered by a black box. A fourth 119-page document labeled "Grand Jury-NY" is also entirely redacted. It's unclear what proceedings it stemmed from, but the document listed immediately before it is a transcript in which a prosecutor asks a grand jury in 2020 to consider evidence for a superseding indictment of Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Epstein Update Mid-December

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist.  Especially Epstein.

Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate at NYT:

But the two men’s relationship was both far closer and far more complex than the president now admits.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the two men forged a bond intense enough to leave others who knew them with the impression that they were each other’s closest friend, The Times found. Mr. Epstein was then a little-known financier who cultivated mystery around the scope and source of his self-made wealth. Mr. Trump, six years older, was a real estate scion who relished publicity and exaggerated his successes. Neither man drank or did drugs. They pursued women in a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency.

Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most reliable wingman. During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone, according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time in his homes.

With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex.

“I just think it was trophy hunting,” Stacey Williams, who rose to fame as a star of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions during the 1990s, said in an interview with The Times. In social media posts and interviews with news outlets in recent years, Ms. Williams has described how Mr. Trump groped her in 1993 at Trump Tower while Mr. Epstein — whom she was then dating — watched. “I think Jeffrey liked that he had this Sports Illustrated model who had this name, and that Trump was pursuing me,” she said. Mr. Trump has denied her account.

To shed light on their friendship, The Times interviewed more than 30 former Epstein employees, victims of his abuse and others who crossed paths with the two men over the years. The Times also obtained new documents that illuminate their relationship and scoured court documents and other public records.

Many of the people interviewed by The Times asked to share their stories anonymously, saying they feared for their safety at the hands of supporters of Mr. Trump, a president who has deployed the might of the federal government to target and punish his political opponents. Some Epstein victims have already received death threats for demanding a full accounting of the government’s investigations, according to a statement released by more than two dozen of them last month.

Ranting and Lying

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Trump is showing his age.  Sometimes, it's amusing, but sometimes it's disturbing. Cognitive decline is no joke when it involves someone who can wipe out all life on Earth.

David Sanger at NYT:

President Trump gave an 18-minute speech intended to defend his accomplishments in the first year, and argue that the “Golden Age” he promised in his presidential campaign last year was building steam.

The speech was, in typical form, largely strung together from familiar lines he uses at White House events, rallies and speeches. And, in Trumpian style, there were a long list of exaggerations and misleading statements.

But notably absent from the president’s remarks was his argument from recent weeks that “affordability” was nothing but a “hoax” and a “con job” by Democrats — a line that made his own advisers cringe.

Mr. Trump, always more comfortable with what he calls his “weave” of free association rather than reading from a teleprompter, raced through his talk as if he was late to an important dinner. There were no digressions, unlike his speech in Pennsylvania a week ago when he repeatedly veered from the topic. At times he seemed to be yelling — almost as if he didn’t believe he had to take the time to convince his audience of how well his first 11 months had gone.

As usual, Trump lied.  Daniel Dale at CNN:

Inflation under Trump: Near the end of the speech, Trump falsely claimed, “Inflation is stopped.” Inflation hasn’t stopped; the year-over-year inflation rate in September, 3.0%, was the same as the rate when Trump returned to office in January – in fact, if you go to multiple decimal places, the September rate was a tiny bit higher – and September was the fifth consecutive month the year-over-year rate had increased.

 

...

After noting that the price of eggs has plummeted since March, Trump added, “And everything else is falling rapidly.” That is not true even if he was talking specifically about grocery prices, which are up this year. Consumer Price Index data shows that a far greater number of grocery items have increased in price since he returned to office than have decreased. The most recent available CPI figures at the time he spoke on Wednesday, for September, showed that average grocery prices were up about 2.7% from September 2024; about 1.4% from January 2025, the month Trump returned to office; and about 0.3% from August to September.

...

Prescription drug prices: Trump repeated his false claim that an executive order he issued on prescription drug prices will cut those prices by “as much as 400, 500, and even 600%.” These figures are mathematically impossible; if the president magically got the companies to reduce the prices of all of their drugs to $0, that would be a 100% cut. You can read a longer fact check here.

...

Investment in the US this year: Trump repeated his false claim that there has been “$18 trillion” in investment in the US during his second presidency, saying Wednesday, “I’ve secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States.” This figure is fiction. At the time he spoke on Wednesday, the White House’s own website said the figure was “$9.6 trillion,” and even that is a major exaggeration; a detailed CNN review in October found the White House was counting trillions of dollars in vague investment pledges, pledges that were about “bilateral trade” or “economic exchange” rather than investment in the US, or vague statements that didn’t even rise to the level of pledges. You can read more here.

 

I was wondering how Trump found his troop pay money without a congressional authorization/appropriation. He found it by taking it away from troop housing money. Always a con artist. https://t.co/voaRTB8e5F

— David Frum (@davidfrum) December 18, 2025

Moses Supposes Erroneously

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections. He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm -- and not just because of his low approval ratings.

Congressional Republicans are in a tough spot. On the one hand, anything bearing Obama's name is toxic to GOP activists. On the other hand, the general public now favors the Affordable Care Act by nearly a two-to-one margin. And about half of those who receive ACA premium subsidies are either self-employed or work for a small business — exactly the kind of voters that marginal Republicans need in a general election.

Emily Brooks at The Hill:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday insisted that he has not lost control of the lower chamber of Congress in the wake of four Republican moderates mounting a major rebellion by joining with Democrats to force a vote on extending expiring ObamaCare subsidies.

“I have not lost control of the House, no,” Johnson said when asked about his grip on the chamber following the GOP rebellion.

“We have the smallest majority in U.S. history. These are not normal times,” Johnson said. “There are processes and procedures in the house that are less frequently used when there are larger majorities.”

His comments came shortly after four Republican moderates in swing districts — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Rob Bresnahan (Pa.) and Ryan Mackenzie (Pa.) — signed a petition led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to extend the expiring enhanced ObamaCare subsidies for three years. That brought the petition to 218 signatures, enough to force a vote on the matter.

That, in turn, came after negotiations between moderates and GOP leaders on a compromise amendment vote to extend the subsidies as part of a separate House GOP health care bill fell apart over the weekend and on Tuesday.

Susie Wiles Speaks

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. 

At Vanity Fair, Chris Whipple interviews Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, part 1

“Some clinical psychologist that knows one million times more than I do will dispute what I’m going to say. But high-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities.” Wiles said Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality.” He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

Peter Baker at NYT:

President Trump’s chief of staff said she tried to get him to end his “score settling” against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged that the administration’s still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the president’s desire for retribution.

Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, told an interviewer that she forged a “loose agreement” with Mr. Trump to stop focusing after three months on punishing antagonists, an effort that evidently did not succeed. While she insisted that Mr. Trump is not constantly thinking about retribution, she said that “when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”

Ms. Wiles made the comments in a series of extraordinarily unguarded interviews over the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term with the author Chris Whipple that are being published Tuesday by Vanity Fair . Not only did she confirm that Mr. Trump is using criminal prosecution to retaliate against adversaries, she also acknowledged that he was not telling the truth when he accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting the private island of the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

0ver the course of 11 interviews, Ms. Wiles offered pungent assessments of the president and his team: Mr. Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vice President JD Vance has “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and his conversion from Trump critic to ally was based not on principle but was “sort of political” because he was running for Senate. Elon Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user and “an odd, odd duck,” whose actions were not always “rational” and left her “aghast.” Russell T. Vought , the budget director, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files

...

Mr. Musk has acknowledged trying ketamine “a few years ago,” but denied reports of more recent use. In the interview with The Times on Monday, Ms. Wiles took issue with the quote attributed to her about his drug use. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I wouldn’t have said it and I wouldn’t know.” But Mr. Whipple played a tape for The Times in which she could be heard saying it.

And a futile non-denial denial (Lordy, there are tapes.)

 

The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.

Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…

— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025

Anti-Newsom Oppo Starts

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  We are already in the very early stages of the 2028 campaign.

 Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein at Axios:

Gavin Newsom's Democratic rivals are plotting how to take down the early 2028 frontrunner, with a heavy emphasis on how unpopular his left-leaning views are outside deep-blue California.

Driving the news: Our conversations with more than 20 Democratic operatives, including several working for 2028 hopefuls, reveal that they see the California governor as the guy to beat — and a guy with a lot of personal baggage that's exploitable for a presidential primary.

The consensus themes to expect in attacks on Newsom:The "too liberal, coastal elite" argument. If primary voters prioritize electability, Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor — could be seen as a risky choice, the operatives say.

Newsom has defended providing health care for undocumented immigrants because he supports universal health care — a mainstream position in the 2020 Democratic primary some Democrats have since abandoned.

Affordability, housing and homelessness remain big problems in California, despite Newsom initiatives as mayor and governor.

The wealthy Getty family has been a key backer of Newsom's political and business career, leading some of his foes in California to call him a slick "Davos Democrat."
...

Zoom in: Some of Newsom's potential rivals and other Democratic leaders have begun going public with attacks.California Rep. Ro Khanna, referring to Newsom's former chief of staff recently being charged with corruption, said the aide's indictment is a "toxic stain" on the state.

World War .G: Status at the End of 2025

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Jason Lalljee at Axios:

Indiana lawmakers' rejection of a plan to create two more Republican congressional seats Thursday delivered a blow to the White House's scramble to redistrict ahead of midterm elections, but the state isn't the only egg in President Trump's basket.

The big picture: Six states have already implemented new congressional maps, and more could follow.

Republicans hold only a narrow lead in the House of Representatives, 220 seats to Democrats' 213, and the sitting president's party tends to lose seats in midterm elections.

That means that control of the House could come down to just a few races.

Projections for the six states that have essentially locked in their efforts — Texas, California, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Utah — show Republicans set to gain a net one to four seats in November and any gains from Democrats likely cancelled out by Republican wins.

Between the lines: Of the six, California and Utah were the only states where Republicans weren't favored in redistricting efforts.Democrat-led states are enacting their own redistricting in contrast to what the GOP is doing — and California did it successfully — but several Democratic leaders find their hands tied by independent redistricting commissions they had once championed.

A Blue Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  This year's elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Julia Manchester at The Hill:

Republicans are feeling spooked by recent special elections losses and underperformances in party strongholds, as the White House ramps up President Trump’s presence on the campaign trail ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped Miami’s mayoral office for the first time in nearly 30 years and won a conservative-leaning state House district in Georgia that Trump carried by 12 points last year.

Those victories came after Republicans gave up ground to Democrats in a special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District last week and lost by wide margins in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races last month.

Republicans note that while the off-year gubernatorial losses were not necessarily a surprise, upsets in GOP strongholds such as Miami and the Georgia state House district have them on edge.

“Republicans losing in Republican areas? That’s a different story. I think that’s got people freaking out,” one former Trump White House staffer said

Andrew Egger at The Bulwark:

“It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”

“We are facing almost certain defeat.”

“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard.”

“You hit the nail on the head. This is an absolute disaster. No matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”

These pessimistic assessments of Republicans’ chances in next year’s midterms are the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from disgruntled GOP operatives outside the MAGA camp. This week, however, they’ve been coming from someone way crazier: Joe Gruters, the Trump-diehard chair of the Republican National Committee, who has been barnstorming conservative radio this week.1

Gruters isn’t throwing Trump under the bus. Quite the opposite: As Democrats overperform in special election after special election and Republican confidence in the midterms craters, he’s trying to set expectations low—way low. After all, he says, the guys in power nearly always lose the midterms. And as once-unimaginable cracks have begun spiderwebbing across the MAGA coalition, he’s making a specific case to his party: “The only person that could bring the nose up and help us win is the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

Still, it’s remarkably abnormal to see the chair of the institutional Republican party—the head of the party’s campaign apparatus!—openly predict doom for his candidates. It risks further depressing GOP voters and encouraging lawmakers to retire early. And, beyond that, it’s far from clear that the Republicans who actually need to get elected next year share Gruters’s assessment of how to fix their electoral predicament.

This week, I spoke to a number of swing-state GOP operatives about Trump and the midterm environment. And they were pretty blunt. To them, the biggest reason Republicans seem bound for disaster isn’t historical midterm trends. It’s the world the president has built for them to run in—particularly when it comes to affordability. (To encourage them to speak openly, including in ways that contradict top-down GOP messaging, we agreed not to disclose their names.)

“His message sucks. It’s absolute trash. ‘Affordability is a Democrat hoax’??? Give me a break,” said one strategist, a veteran of presidential and congressional campaigns. “It’s the non-college-educated version of the Biden message, and we saw how well that worked. . . . Nobody believes the economy and particularly affordability is getting better.”